Baucus, Camp pressing on with Tax Code overhaul

The message that tax reform most likely won’t happen this year hasn’t reached Rep. Dave Camp and Sen. Max Baucus.

The two powerful committee chairmen are moving full-speed ahead with plans to overhaul the Tax Code despite the fact that nearly everyone in Washington thinks such major reform is very unlikely this year.

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Camp, a Republican and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Baucus, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, are dancing a tango. Call it the tax reform kabuki dance. It’s all to prove the naysayers wrong and make the daunting, potentially years-long task of a Tax Code overhaul seem like an inevitability.

Last week, Camp unveiled 11 — yes, 11 — bipartisan working groups aimed at a Tax Code overhaul on subjects ranging from small business to energy.

On the other side of the Capitol, Baucus and other Finance Committee members are working feverishly to develop tax reform option papers or draft legislation that can be circulated in the spring. And Baucus plans to meet weekly soon with Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington state and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, leaders of the Senate Budget and Appropriations committees, respectively.

K Street is even participating in the dance. Lobbyists say they are telling their clients that tax reform is in the offing in a bid to seal pricey contracts to protect precious tax preferences and loopholes.

It’s all enough to make it seem like something is actually happening on tax reform. “We’re going to continue [in] this vein of examining key issues and trying to move the whole concept of comprehensive tax reform forward,” Camp told POLITICO. “You can expect more.”

Both Democrats and Republicans argue that tax reform is a key instrument in resolving the fiscal fights at the top of the political agenda. President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats want to close long-vilified loopholes for the wealthy, while Republicans have focused on lowering the rates for all and flattening the playing field. Without tax reform, both parties acknowledge, real fiscal reform is unlikely.

Whether the chairmen can succeed in building momentum for tax reform will be one of the defining issues of the 113th Congress and could test the leadership prowess of not only Camp and Baucus but also House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Right now, Congress is wrestling with mostly presidential priorities — namely, immigration reform and gun control. Failing to move on tax reform in any way would be a major problem for Republicans, who have been touting an overhaul since their days in the House minority.